The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

director Peter Jacksonviewed: 08/31/2013

Inspired by his play on LEGO Lord of the Rings video game, Felix asked for us to queue up ye olde Peter Jackson trilogy, noting that Clara had never seen them.

The funny thing is that while neither child has read the books and Clara had indeed not seen the films, they frequently “recognized” scenes from the movie that were re-created for LEGO Lord of the Rings, scenes played out by LEGO versions of the cast in direct mimicry of the films. Clara kept noting, “I remember this scene!” Which, if you think about it, is truly bizarre. But there you go. It’s a weird mega-post-modern universe in which the generations of interpretation and reference transcend media like crazy in just this way.

Not that I have a problem with it. I just think it’s kind of weird.

For me, I kind of tripped out that this film is from 2001 and thus 12 years old. I’d written about it here before on its initial theatrical run, long before I would have watched it with Felix and before Clara was even a glimmer in my eye.

But the only real thing I felt this time around was annoyed again with some of the computerized camera shots, zooming around Mordor in fantastical flights that have no weight in reality and somehow nagged at me back in 2002 as it does now. The effects don’t look as dated as they might except for the “camerawork” in those sequences (in my opinion).

Other than that, it’s freaking long (3 hours) and we’re queuing up the other films for coming weekends. The kids enjoyed it.